The goal of this panel is to explore ways in which the American Catholic Church responded to the needs of Japanese Americans in the period surrounding Executive Order 9066 and their mass wartime incarceration. Although only 2 percent of West Coast Japanese Americans in 1942 were Catholic, the Catholic Church played an important role in the prewar community. Through the work of Maryknoll missionaries and individual leaders such as Father Edward Flanagan and Dorothy Day, the Catholic Church offered needed support to Japanese Americans during and after their incarceration. Likewise, several Japanese Americans converted to Catholicism and used church organizations as tools for activism.

Greg Robinson will examine the lives of two biracial Japanese Americans – Franklin Chino and Yoné U. Stafford – and their relationship with the Catholic Church. As Robinson will show, both Chino and Stafford were drawn to Catholicism because of their views on social action, and in each case used Catholic organizations as a platform for promoting their vision of the good society. Matthieu Langlois will discuss the relationship between Dorothy Day and the Japanese American community. Langlois will focus his presentation on Day’s organization The Catholic Worker and several prominent Japanese Americans who worked with it, notably writer Hisaye Yamamoto and art educator Kichi Harada. Yamamoto, who is regarded as one of the greatest Asian American writers of the 20^th century, cultivated a friendship with Day and became involved in The Catholic Worker in the years after the war. Jonathan van Harmelen will discuss the pro-Nisei political advocacy of two Maryknoll priests, Bishop James Walsh and Father Hugh Lavery, and their work with Japanese American communities. As van Harmelen notes, both Walsh and Lavery visited the camps to provide material and spiritual support to the community during their imprisonment, and engaged in diverse lobbying efforts with the federal government to call for fair treatment towards Japanese Americans. Lastly, Sister Joanne Jaruko Doi will present on the role of faith and remembrance with regards to historical memory of the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. A member of the Maryknoll society, Sister Doi will discuss the importance of faith for Japanese Americans as a means of preserving community throughout the incarceration and during resettlement.

Japanese American National Museum curator Emily Anderson, Ph.D., will serve as chair for the panel. A specialist in the history of Christianity in Japan, Anderson recently co-curated with with scholar Duncan Ryuken Williams the exhibit Sutra and Bible on religion and the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.